FTOPS Begins, and the Real Effect of the Neteller Withdrawal

OK so tonight is the beginning of the FTOPS, with Event #1 going off at 9pm ET, a $216 buyin, 200k guaranteed tournament where the first prize is set at a minimum of $38,000 and change. Niiiice. As I've said here many times, for a guy like me who only ever plays at night, playing in a 200k guaranteed nlh tournament is really sweet, so I am looking very much forward to that whole series beginning this evening. When I checked this morning, there were already over 550 signups, and with the $200 buyin and the 200k guarantee, that means full tilt is expecting at least 1000 signups, which I bet is just under where the actual number of signups will come in. I'm going to guess a little more than 1000 signups, but in the end I bet the final number is within 10% or so of the 1000 needed to reach the guarantee. Full tilt cannot be happy overall that the whole Neteller business happened shortly before their latest series of high-buyin guaranteed events, but I am guessing they will reach the guarantees on all of the big ones at least.

Which leads me right to what I really wanted to write about today. A lot has been written lately, by fellow bloggers and otherwise, about one of the most nasty, dastardly effects of the anti-gaming legislation in general, and specifically the recent payment processor issues stemming from Neteller's withdrawal from the U.S. market last month. The argument is that, not only has it per se become harder for U.S. players to deposit and withdraw from online poker sites, but, because of this increased difficulty, as the theory goes, over time the "fish" -- you know, the guys who rebuy every third day and just endlessly deposit, donk, deposit and donk some more, rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat -- will see their online rolls shrink away to nothing, and eventually stop playing entirely since they cannot easily continue to replenish their bankrolls. The end result, many people familiar with the online poker world argue, will be a world where only the good players remain as regulars on the major online poker sites. And with the fish gone, and only the sharks left to roam the online seas, the games themselves will become far less beatable, and that will essentially be the end of online poker for most people for all intents and purposes.

This is an interesting theory to me, and I'm not sure specifically how one would argue with the logic there. But here's the thing -- so far it certainly does seem to me, as a purely multi-table tournament (and never cash game) guy, that there is more or less no difference at all in the overall level of skill player I'm running into in my nightly pokerings. I mean, there clearly has been some dropoff in the sheer number of players in my nightly tournaments. We've all seen the numbers from Bill Rini et al -- traffic on pokerstars and fulltilt appears to be down somewhere in the neighborhood of 10-15% since the Neteller arrests and pullout from the U.S. market last month. The attendance in my regular nightly tournaments bears this fact out, as something like the nightly HORSE mtt on full tilt, which used to feature around 200 or so players every night, is now down to more like 150 players. The nightly 25k guaranteed nlh tournament at 10pm ET on full tilt, which was just coming into its own up around 1800-2000 players a night, is now much closer to 1400 or 1500 on a regular basis. So the aggregate number of players has definitely dropped off, no doubt about that.

But I have to be honest here -- as someone who plays many of the same mtts almost every single night on the major poker sites, I am simply not seeing any difference whatsoever in the level of play among the players who remain on the sites. Now, to be sure over time this may change, as the theoretical argument I described above continues to come to fruition (it is, by definition, more of a long-term issue than a short-term one, as the bad players will need time to work off their existing rolls). But for now, although I am definitely seeing fewer players on the sites, I'm not seeing anything relating to better players among those who remain. That is to say, I still see more or less the exact same number of HORSE donkeys, and basically the exact same number of preflop AJo donkeycallers in holdem, early-stage pushmonkeys, you name it. I can honestly say that the people who remain on the major poker sites (pokerstars and full tilt, for me) and play in the regular multi-table tournaments are not one whit better today than they were a month ago, or a year ago for that matter.

Does anyone else have the same or similar experience thus far?

Now, I will disclaim again by saying that I am not a cash game player. Although I may not be able to put my finger on exactly why this is, it makes sense to me that in the cash games, the difference could be much more pronounced. I guess maybe it's because in the cash games, the skill players, the grinders, the 1 bb an hour profitable guys are the ones who tend to survive and make the money in the long run. And when even the good players are basically subsisting on 1, maybe 2 big bets an hour in profits, I could see how a slight increase across the board in the quality of play could have a noticeable impact on one's overall profitability. But in mtt's, from my perspective anyways, I am just not seeing a difference. Maybe it's because so much of mtt success is based on luck anyways -- not that luck doesn't play a significant factor in the cash games as well, because clearly it does, but just because long-term success in mtt's is so much more based on luck than long-term success in cash games, which seems to be more based on making the right plays, grinding it out, not tilting, etc. Maybe I am manufacturing that entire distinction, I don't know, but again I would be really interested in hearing your thoughts on the subject. All I know is, for me I'm not seeing any discernible improvement as yet in the general quality of play of my opponents in any of the multi-table tournaments I regularly participate in online since the whole Neteller fiasco began.

And my results have borne this fact out. I've been focusing largely on satellites to larger buyin tournaments over the past 4 or 5 months in my online play, and a quick look at my stats shows that I am far and away qualifying more through satellite tournaments over the past month or so than I ever used to before the whole Neteller shit first hit the fan. Now some of that is due to me playing more satellites over the past month, which is probably true, but believe me I was playing plenty of them (and qualifying a decent amount of time) for at least the month or two before that as well. Yet, my overall tournament performance is probably at its best in several months -- if not ever, for that matter -- if anything since the whole Neteller thing happened in mid-January.

Which leads me to my second point/query about this whole theoretical issue. Let's assume for a minute that the level of play is inching slightly higher over time as a result of the difficulty of moving money into and out of online poker as a gambling medium. Is this necessarily a bad thing? I for one have definitely been 100% serious when I've complained over the past 18 months or so online that I would love nothing more than to get the donks out of my mtts, so when I reraise allin preflop with my medium stack and pocket Tens, the donkey with the AJo will fucking fold instead of always calling me, and invariably spiking his Ace, Jack, straight, board two pair higher than my pocket pair, whatever it takes to steal these pots away from me with their nasty donkey suckouts. I know this is something that a whole lot of people say, but believe me when I say I have actually meant it every time I've made the statement -- I really have long thought that I would perform far better in my mtts without the lowest level donkeys in there phucking things up with their incorrect, stoopid play. And again, unlike in cash games where I am interested to hear everyone's thoughts but where I can accept that raising the overall level of play of one's opponents is all bad for everyone, in my tournaments there are just so many phucking donkeys out there, eliminating me with bad play after bad play and lucky pull after lucky pull, that I really believe that getting rid of the whole bottom class of uberdonkeys will be beneficial to my overall mtt performance.

What does everyone think of this idea? Too pompous, too brash of me, to think that getting rid of the worst donkeys in the mtts will actually improve my performance overall in these things? As I've said, so far so good for me since Neteller went away. I'm scoring in more mtts than I ever used to, and although a lot of this is clearly due to me just playing very well generally right now, I am man enough to admit that my tremendous skill is likely not the only factor going into these good results.

So, I would be very interested in hearing your experiences on this topic. Are you, as either a cash game player or a tournament player, noticing a difference in the skill level of the players you're playing against overall in your online poker experience since the Neteller withdrawal from the U.S. market? How do you know this skill level has changed? What's the measuring stick you're using? Is it just a general sense based on the quality of play you're seeing, the quality of calls or strategic raises, etc.? Or, is it something you can see on pokertracker or another simiilar application, as I have read in a few places out on the Internets? And, is anybody else out there having my experience where they actually think they might be benefitting from eliminating the very worst donkeys in their usual games?

Let me know your thoughts, as this is something I am certainly interested in and something which I would think is of value to all of us regular online poker players. And in the meantime, come check me out tonight if you like in FTOPS Event #1, which begins at 9pm ET on full tilt. Oh and hey, last night I pulled another of my favorite moves -- I played one more of those peep token sngs to end the night, this one once again with both Smokkee and jeciimd, and by the time the final table hit (remember, the top 5 finishers out of 18 players win the Tier 1 tokens) with me in 3rd place of 9 remaining players, I was feeling really tired all of a sudden so I just got up and went to sleep. I log in this morning, and Boom! 2nd place. Won my token anyways. How that could possibly happen with how big the blinds get in those things is beyond me. Seriously. But happen it did. I love that. Oh yeah, and thanks LOK1 for the suckout elimination again last night from yet another blogger tournament (CC's Thursday Bash, for the first time I've ever played in the event, which was really fun of course until The Suckout) -- that's two major tournament-ending river suckouts at the hands of LOK1 in two blogger tournaments in two days for me. What fun. I'm sure LOK is enjoying that immensely as I know he has had some issues with me in the past. Enjoy man, I'm happy if you're happy!